Practical References
that they are complex in character, multitudinous in relationship, and various in function. They no longer can be regarded merely as wheelbarrows to ideas. They have accumulated heritages of which they can not be deprived without a distinct loss to literature, without embarrassment to higher social intercourse. To dispossess them of their inscrutable powers slowly acquired would be to denude literature of its flower and foliage; much of its beauty would be lost, and its suggestiveness would suffer; the blossoms of poetry would fade, and the fragrance of language which excites emotion would pass away; the contagion between moods would weaken; verbal qualities of reflection and of parallelism above and beyond the cold level of fact would vanish.
To the lover of belles-lettres—to the sensitive soul of a Keats or a Hearn—words are living, mutable things. In a sense they are capricious, for they suggest different conceptions to different minds and to the same
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